Hope is found again

Hello all!  Before we headed into round 2 of the chemo battle, mom had some extra energy (I think the first round of chemo was wearing off).  Her main goal of the day was to go and visit her friends at work.  We got up that morning and gathered tea party materials and headed down to Palomar College Library in Escondido.  She loved being there.  We had a little tea party with Connie, and Katherine.  I could tell she was pretty much back to her normal self, because she was trying to get back into work already (grabbed the keys to check for books in the book drop off, and helped close up the library)  It was so cute seeing her light up.


Before her 2nd chemo, I also took mom shopping.  We went to north county fair, got some awesome pedicures, and went to the fabric store ( I know way too much fun for one day :) )  Mom had never had a pedicure before.  She was pleasantly surprised that they do know how to do toes right. lol!  We then headed to the fabric store to get fabric to make baby blankets for the preemies in the NICU I work at.   I bought her a sewing machine, and she was sooooo excited!!  I hadn't seen her smile like that in a while.  She kept saying, "I am so happy! I love it!" (like a kid on christmas morning seeing that Santa had come)  I didn't realize that it would make her so happy, but I was definitely glad to do so.

Beautiful Toes!

New sewing machine!

                         Taking a break from sewing baby blankets =)

So.... the "plan" with this chemo stuff is not exactly set in stone apparently.  We went in for mom's scheduled meeting with her oncologist on monday at 10am, then were planning on going to round 2 for chemo at 11am, but he cancelled it (for good reasons, I'll get into it later :) )  I guess having that MD behind your name, you kinda get to run the show :)


Sunday night made me super anxious.  Why? Well.... after getting bad news upon bad news for the past 3 months regarding mom, I was thinking we were just going to get more of it with the oncologist on Monday.  I cried myself to sleep that night, woke up, grabbed some coffee, then was on my way to mom's appointment.  We waited in the waiting room for a good amount of time before mom's name was called.  As we were waiting for the doctor once mom had her room, we of course, were joking around trying to make the best of it.  I made dad laugh super hard with some of the jokes (We hadn't seen that in a long while).


Finally, the doctor came in with a smile on his face.  I was guarded when he first came in, but when he read the results of the very recent MRI (done a couple days ago), I felt relief.  Don't ask me why, but now a days, getting any kind of news that doesn't say "more cancer is found" is the best news in the world.

"Once you choose hope, anything's possible."  ~Christopher Reeve


He wanted to do this recent MRI because he had thought the tumor found mom's breast from the original PET scan (done a month ago) was not a metastatic part of the original cancer found in her ureter in June, but in fact a separate cancer.  He is pretty convinced it is breast cancer too.  "Seriously?!?,  another kind of cancer at the same time?!?"I thought.  Even though he had already told us this news 3 weeks ago, sometimes this stuff doesn't get old... BUT no more cancer anywhere else (besides the liver, lung, and breast according to this recent MRI)  WHEW!!


Soooo..... instead of starting the chemo right away, he wanted to get a biopsy done to see what kind of cancer we were really dealing with in the breast.  ( I guess the cancer in her ureter doesn't usually metastasize to the breast)  Why does this matter?  Well the doc said that if it is indeed breast cancer, he would add more drugs to mom's chemo schedule and try to kill off that cancer as well.  Better to have full knowledge about what's going on so we can nip ALL of  this cancer in the bud!


So all in all, HOPE has been found again in our family.